The Flight of the Shadow

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"You will not be surprised that you should never have heard of your uncle
Edmund.

"I dare not ask you, my child, not to love me less; for perhaps you ought
to do so. If you do, I have my consolation in the fact that my little one
cannot make me love _her_ less."

Thus ended the manuscript, signed with my uncle's name and address in
full, and directed to me at the bottom of the last page.

CHAPTER XXXV.

UNCLE EDMUND'S APPENDIX.

When my uncle Edward had told his story, corresponding, though more
conversational in form, with that I have now transcribed, my uncle Edmund
took up his part of the tale from the moment when he came to himself
after their fearful rush down the river. It was to this effect:

He lay on the very verge of the hideous void. How it was that he got thus
far and no farther, he never could think. He was out of the central
channel, and the water that ran all about him and poured immediately over
the edge of the precipice, could not have sufficed to roll him there.
Finding himself on his back, and trying to turn on his side in order to
rise, his elbow found no support, and lifting his head a little, he
looked down into a moon-pervaded abyss, where thin silvery vapours were
stealing about. One turn, and he would have been on his way, plumb-down,
to the valley below--say, rather, on his way off the face of the world
into the vast that bosoms the stars and the systems and the cloudy
worlds. His very soul quivered with terror. The pang of it was so keen
that it saved him from the swoon in which he might yet have dropped from
the edge of the world. Not daring to rise, and unable to roll himself up
the slight slope, he shifted himself sideways along the ground, inch by
inch, for a few yards, then rose, and ran staggering away, as from a
monster that might wake and pursue and overtake him. He doubted if he
would ever have recovered the sudden shock of his awful position, of his
one glance into the ghastly depth, but for the worse horror of the
all-but-conviction that his brother had gone down to Hades through that
terrible descent. If only he too had gone, he cried in his misery, they
would now be together, with no wicked woman between their hearts! For his
love too was changed into loathing. He too was at once, and entirely, and
for ever freed from her fascination. The very thought of her was hateful
to him.

With straight course, but wavering walk, he made his way through the
moonlight to demand his brother. He too picked up the handkerchief, and
dropped it with disgust.

What followed in the lady's chamber, I have already given in his own
words.

When he fled from the chalet, it was with self-slaughter in his heart.
But he endured in the comfort of the thought that the door of death was
always open, that he might enter when he would. He sought the foot of the
fall the same night; then, as one possessed of demons to the tombs, fled
to the solitary places of the dark mountains.

He went through many a sore stress. Ignorant of the death of his father
and his elder brother, the dread misery of encountering them with his
brother's blood on his soul, barred his way home. He could not bear the
thought of reading in their eyes his own horror of himself. His money was
soon spent, and for months he had to endure severe hardships--of simple,
wholesome human sort. He thought afterward that, if he had had no trouble
of that kind, his brain would have yielded. He would have surrendered
himself but for the uselessness of it, and the misery and public stare it
would bring upon his family.

Knowing German well, and contriving at length to reach Berlin, he found
employment there of various kinds, and for a good many years managed to
live as well as he had any heart for, and spare a little for some worse
off than himself. Having no regard to his health, however, he had at
length a terrible attack of brain-fever, and but partially recovering his
faculties after it, was placed in an asylum. There he dreamed every night
of his home, came awake with the joy of the dream, and could sleep no
more for longing--not to go home--that he dared not think of--but to look
upon the place, if only once again. The longing grew till it became
intolerable. By his talk in his sleep, the good people about him learning
his condition, gave and gathered money to send him home. On his way, he
came to himself quite, but when he reached England, he found he dared not
go near the place of his birth. He remained therefore in London, where he
made the barest livelihood by copying legal documents. In this way he
spent a few miserable years, and then suddenly set out to walk to the
house of his fathers. He had but five shillings in his possession when
the impulse came upon him.

He reached the moor, and had fallen exhausted, when a solitary gypsy,
rare phenomenon, I presume, with a divine spot awake in his heart, found
him, gave him some gin, and took him to a hut he had in the wildest part
of the heath. He lay helpless for a week, and then began to recover. When
he was sufficiently restored, he helped his host to weave the baskets
which, as soon as he had enough to make a load, he took about the country
in a cart. He soon became so clever at the work as quite to earn his food
and shelter, making more baskets while the gypsy was away selling the
others. At home, the old horse managed to live, or rather not to die, on
the moor, and, all things considered, had not a very hard life of it. On
his back, uncle Edmund, ill able to walk so far--for he was anything but
strong now, would sometimes go wandering in the twilight, or when the
moon shone, to some spot whence he could see his old home. Occasionally
he would even go round and round the house while we slept, like a ghost
dreaming of ancient days.

"But," I said, interrupting his narrative, "the horseman I saw that night
in the storm could not have been you, uncle; for the horse was a grand
creature, rearing like the horse with Peter the Great on his back, in the
corner of the map of Russia!"

"Were _you_ out that terrible night?" he returned. "The lightning was
enough to frighten even an older horse than the gypsy's.--I wonder how my
friend is getting on! He must think me very ungrateful! But I daresay he
imagines me lying fathom-deep in the bog.--You will do something for him,
won't you, Ed?"

"You shall do for him yourself what you please, Ed," answered my own
uncle, "and I will help you."

"But, uncle Edmund," I said, "if it was you we saw, the place you were in
was a very boggy one always, and nearly a lake then!"

"I thought I should never get out!" he replied. "But for the poor horse
and his owner, I should not have minded."

"How _did_ you get out of it, uncle?" I persisted. "Lady Cairnedge
smothered a splendid black horse not far from there. Through the darkness
I heard him going down. It makes me shudder every time I think of it."

"I cannot tell you, child. I suppose my gray was such a skeleton that the
bog couldn't hold him. I left it all to him, and he got himself and me
too out of it somehow. It was too dark, as you know, to see anything
between the flashes. I remember we were pretty deep sometimes."

He went back to London after that, and had come and gone once or twice,
he said. When he came he always lodged with his gypsy friend. He had
learned that his father was dead, but took the Mr. Whichcote he heard
mentioned, for his elder brother, David, my father.

I asked him how it was he appeared to such purpose, and in the very nick
of time, that afternoon when lady Cairnedge had come with her servants to
carry John away; for of course I knew now that our champion must have
been uncle Edmund. He answered he had that very morning made up his mind
to present himself at the house, and had walked there for the purpose,
resolved to tell his brother all. He got in by the end of the garden, as
John was in the way of doing, and had reached the little grove of firs by
the house, when he saw a carriage at the door, and drew back. Hearing
then the noises of attack and defence, he came to the window and looked
in, heard lady Cairnedge's shriek, saw her on the floor, and the men
attempting to force an entrance at the other side of the window. Hardly
knowing what he did, he rushed at them and beat them off. Then suddenly
turning faint, for his heart was troublesome, he retired into the grove,
and lay there helpless for a time. He recovered only to hear the carriage
drive away, leaving quiet behind it.

To see that woman in the house of his fathers, was a terrible shock to
him. Could it be that David had married her? He stole from his covert,
and crawled across the moor to the gypsy's hut. There he was consoled by
learning that the mistress of the house was a young girl, whom he rightly
concluded to be the daughter of his brother David.

In making a second visit with the same intent, he had another attack of
the heart, and now knew that he would have died in the snow had not John
found him.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

We returned to England the next day. All the journey through, my uncles
were continually reverting to the matter of John's parentage: the more
they saw of him, the less could they believe lady Cairnedge his mother.
Through questions put to him, and inquiries afterward made, they
discovered that, when he went to London, he had gone to lady Cairnedge's
lawyer, not his father's, of whom he had never heard--which accounted for
his having on that occasion learned nothing of consequence to him. When
we reached London, my uncle Edmund, who, having been bred a lawyer, knew
how to act, went at once to examine the will left by John's father. That
done, he set out for the place where John was born. The rest of us went
home.

The second day after our arrival there, uncle Edmund came. He had found
perfect proof, not only that lady Cairnedge was John's step-mother, but
that she had no authority over him or his property whatever.

A long discussion took place in my uncles' study--I have to shift the
apostrophe of possession--as to whether John ought to compel restitution
of what she might have wrongfully spent or otherwise appropriated. She
had been left an income by each of her husbands, upon either of which
incomes she might have lived at ease; but they had a strong suspicion,
soon entirely justified, that while spending John's money, she had been
saving up far more than her own. But in the discussion, John held to it
that, as she had once been the wife of his father, he would spare her so
far--provided she had nowise impoverished either of the estates. He would
insist only upon her immediate departure.

"Yes, little one," said my uncle, one summer evening, as he and I talked
together, seated alone in the wilderness, "what we call misfortune is
always the only good fortune. Few will say _yes_ in response, but Truth
is independent of supporters, being justified by her children.

"Until _misfortune_ found us," he went on, "my brother and I had indeed
loved one another, but with a love so poor that a wicked woman was able
to send it to sleep. To what she might have brought us, had she had full
scope, God only knows: _now_ all the women in hell could not separate
us!"

"And all the women in paradise would but bring you closer!" I ventured to
add.

The day after our marriage, which took place within a month of our return
from Paris, John went to Rising, on a visit to lady Cairnedge of anything
but ceremony, and took his uncles and myself with him.

"Will you tell her ladyship," he said to the footman, "that Mr. Day
desires to see her."

The man would have shut the door in our faces, with the words, "I will
see if my lady is at home;" but John was prepared for him. He put his
foot between the door and the jamb, and his two hands against the door,
driving it to the wall with the man behind it. There he held him till we
were all in, then closed the door, and said to him, in a tone I had never
heard him use till that moment,

"Let lady Cairnedge know at once that Mr. Day desires to see her."

The man went. We walked into the white drawing-room, the same where I sat
alone among the mirrors the morning after I was lost on the moor. How
well I remembered it! There we waited. The gentlemen stood, but, John
insisting, I sat--my eyes fixed on the door by which we had entered.
In a few minutes, however, a slight sound in another part of the room,
caused me to turn them thitherward. There stood lady Cairnedge, in a
riding-habit, with a whip in her hand, staring, pale as death, at my
uncles. Then, with a scornful laugh, she turned and went through a door
immediately behind her, which closed instantly, and became part of the
wainscot, hardly distinguishable. John darted to it. It was bolted on the
outside. He sought another door, and ran hither and thither through the
house to find the woman. My uncles ran after him, afraid something might
befall him. I remained where I was, far from comfortable. Two or three
minutes passed, and then I heard the thunder of hoofs. I ran to the
window. There she was, tearing across the park at full gallop, on just
such a huge black horse as she had smothered in the bog! I was the only
one of us that saw her, and not one of us ever set eyes upon her again.

When we went over the house, it soon became plain to us that she had been
in readiness for a sudden retreat, having prepared for it after a fashion
of her own: not a single small article of value was to be discovered in
it. John's great-aunt, who left him the property, died in the house,
possessed of a large number of jewels, many of them of great price both
in themselves and because of their antiquity: not one of them was ever
found.

A report reached us long after, that lady Cairnedge was found dead in her
bed in a hotel in the Tyrol.

My uncles lived for many years on the old farm. Uncle Edmund bought a
gray horse, as like uncle Edward's as he could find one, only younger. I
often wondered what Death must think--to know he had his master on his
back, and yet see him mounted by his side. Every day one or the other,
most days both, would ride across the moor to see us. For many years
Martha walked in at the door at least once every week.

My uncles took no pains, for they had no desire, to be distinguished the
one from the other. Each was always ready to meet any obligation of the
other. If one made an appointment, few could tell which it was, and
nobody which would keep it. No one could tell, except, perhaps, one who
had been present, which of them had signed any document: their two hands
were absolutely indistinguishable, I do not believe either of them, after
a time, always himself knew whether the name was his or his brother's. He
could only be always certain it must have been written by one of them.
But each indifferently was ready to honour the signature, _Ed.
Whichcote_.

They died within a month of each other. Their bodies lie side by side. On
their one tombstone is the inscription:

HERE LIE THE DISUSED GARMENTS OF EDWARD AND EDMUND WHICHCOTE,

BORN FEB. 29, 1804;
DIED JUNE 30, AND
JULY 28, 1864.

THEY ARE NOT HERE; THEY ARE RISEN.

John and I are waiting.

Belorba Day.

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